Reescritas do silêncio em passados inextinguíveis: um estudo das configurações de lar nas poéticas migrantes de Warsan Shire, Upile Chisala e Safia Elhillo

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation looks at the poetic works written by Safia Elhillo, Upile Chisala and Warsan Shire, based on the readings of six main theorists that will guide the analytical basis of this study. It browses through the Subaltern Studies devised by Gayatri Spivak (1998, 2014) and Ranajit Guha (1998) to understand how black female writing can challenge hegemonic discourses in contemporary times, particularly from the point of view of female migrant writers. It shows how the subaltern subject owns a voice, especially the black female subject, and proposes to parse the lieux of convergence of cultural multiplicities from migrant identities that add to the renegotiation of present experiences, as well as their families’ and countries’ pasts. It offers a view which moves subaltern identities, previously laid out on the sidelines, towards the center of gender, race and class issues, as discussed by Bell Hooks (2000) and Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí (2004). Built on a contemplation on multicultural and transnational identities which are derived from social, political and historical constructions that reflect in the artistic production of these poets, the aim of this thesis is to explore how the writings of migrant black women are able to rediscuss issues related to identities, especially when, according to Carole Boyce Davies (1994, 1995), they concern diasporic writings and, above all, questions pertaining to the concept of “home”, as asserted by Wendy Walters (2005). From there we shall observe how these poets cast a critical view of their countries of origin, while feeling comfortable in building new notions of home due to the fluidity of borders and symbolically constructed territories, thus granting them the elaboration of new ideas of community.